If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

This is definitely unfortunate. I use TB on my work machine in Ubuntu on a daily basis, and I wouldn't like to go back to Evolution... It's more than I need.

On my personal machines, Thunderbird is perfect. I have one email client that works the same in Windows 7, MacOS, and Linux (Mint+Ubuntu). They all get their email through IMAP, contacts through Zindus (gmail contacts), and calendars through WebDAV. No matter which of my machines I am on, I have the same contents and user experience... I'd hate to lose that.

Well, if they don't care about Thunderbird, why develop it under Mozilla? Why not move the project to another group of developers that care about the project?

There is already a group of developers that cares about the project. Thunderbird is not only developed by Mozilla staff, but also by community developers. I don't understand which advantages a fork would have instead of just developing it further without the Mozilla developers.

Well, if they don't care about Thunderbird, why develop it under Mozilla? Why not move the project to another group of developers that care about the project?

Where is this mythical group of developers that care about Thunderbird more than the existing ones do?

If they were happy committing to Thunderbird before, I don't see why they wouldn't continue. And i doubt that there will suddenly be an influx of fresh blood that wants to move it for some reason.

If anything, Mozilla has stated that this move makes them more open to outside contributions than they were before - making it more friendly for 3rd party devs and less likely they would need to fork it.

As has already been mentioned, this is a GOOD THING.
If it is community driven and supported, it means that it will be built to match community's NEEDS, not mozilla's needs and what they only BELIEVE to be their customers' needs.

I don't think I'll ever use webmail. Not until I'm provided a way to backup my email onto hard drive and restore whenever I want.

then may i suggest gmvault gmail backup utility for linux? it's what i use to back up my gmail account, after i use an SMS backup utility(SMS Backup+) to backup my text messages and call logs from my android phone to my gmail account.

it's CLI driven but quite easy to use. i'm sure if someone were so inclined they could whip up a GUI in Visual Basic to track it's IP add....err...i mean whip up a graphical frontend for it with a minimum of hassle.

I wasn't assuming or saying there's a mythical group of developers, or whatever you want to call it. I was saying that perhaps if Mozilla doesn't longer care about the project, the current developers should fork the project and start with a new project (under a different name) with the same code base, and keep the project moving forward. As a community project, similar to what the LibreOffice guys are doing.

The thing is that the current developers can continue to move the project forward even without Mozilla's help, because Mozilla plans to hand over control of the project to those developers.

The difference with LibreOffice is that Oracle was making it very difficult to contribute to OpenOffice.org. Mozilla, on the other hand, is trying to make it easier to contribute to Thunderbird.

You seem to think the options for the developers are:
1. Let the project die
2. Fork it and keep it alive

In reality, the options are:
1. Have the community take control of the project under the same name with infrastructure support from mozilla
2. Have the community take control of the project under a different name without infrastructure support from mozilla

I wasn't assuming or saying there's a mythical group of developers, or whatever you want to call it. I was saying that perhaps if Mozilla doesn't longer care about the project, the current developers should fork the project and start with a new project (under a different name) with the same code base, and keep the project moving forward. As a community project, similar to what the LibreOffice guys are doing.

The same thing that happened with Netscape and Firefox or LibreOffice, but this time with Thunderbird.

Mozilla is obviously no longer interested in Thunderbird, so why not develop it independently?

I guess my point is, the question should be "why fork it", not "why not fork it"?

Forking a project and setting up all the necessary infrastructure will require a lot of time and work for someone. It shouldn't be done unless there is actually a reason to do so.

Possible reasons would be:

1. Mozilla is actively blocking contributions and making it tough for outsiders to contribute or is forcing development in a different direction from what the community wants - AFAIK this is not true. It is why the LibreOffice fork happened, and is generally the most common reason for forks.

2. Mozilla is simply not interested in continuing to host the infrastructure. Again, AFAIK this isn't true, and they are happy to continue hosting. This is why Firefox was forked from Netscape (among other reasons)

3. To "punish" Mozilla somehow for ending some of their paid work into the project - I think this is misguided, but it sounds to me like this is the reason you want a fork. I could be wrong, though.

4. Some other reason. I'm sure there are others, and I'm genuinely interested to hear if you have another reason you think a fork should happen.

I just think it's non-productive to call for a fork when one isn't necessary. I don't think anyone actually developing on Thunderbird is calling for a fork, and that's where any movement should come from, not anonymous people commenting on news articles.